Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A 2023

 

Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A)

(Ezekiel 37:12-14; St. Paul to the Romans 8:8-11; St. John’s Gospel 11:1-45)

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Today’s Gospel, dear People of God, is both dramatic and deeply consoling, revealing Jesus to us both in the majesty of His divine power and in the depths of His human sympathy.  And yet, most wonderfully of all, we are privileged to learn something of the ineffable beauty of His Personal commitment to, and communion with, His heavenly Father.   This account of the raising of Lazarus is the last of Jesus’ miracles in St. John’s Gospel and, as such, is worthy of our closest attention.

First of all, we should note that the intention of Jesus to establish, confirm, and fulfil faith is paramount in all aspects of the Gospel account:

Jesus said to (His disciples) clearly, “Lazarus has died, and I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.”

Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in Me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”   Martha said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

Jesus raised His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.  I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.”

Six times Jesus uses or calls forth the word ‘believe’ in our short Gospel passage, before St. John himself ultimately tells us:

Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what He had done began to believe in Him.

All is indeed directed towards faith; first of all, and ultimately above all, the faith of Jesus’ chosen disciples upon whom and through whom He will build His future Church; and then, the faith of those very dear friends of His, Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus.  Their home, in the village of Bethany, was always open to Him and, when needed, served as a place of refuge for Him; as, for example, when - after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem and subsequent cleansing of the Temple -- He left the city, its fickle crowds, and the ever-more critical and threatening plots of the Pharisees and Temple authorities.  The Pharisees were so intent on keeping their human traditions rather than the God-given Law handed down to them by Moses; and the Temple authorities, were outraged that their money-raising on the sacred Temple property had been scuppered by Jesus.

Leaving them, He went out of the city to Bethany, and there He spent the night.   (Matthew 21:16-17)

Everything in this miraculous event is, I say, directed towards faith-in-the-Person of Jesus, here revealing Himself in the full beauty and power of His unique being: Perfect God and Perfect Man.

Jesus reveals not just the reality of His human nature, but also, its divine beauty by the depth of His understanding, and the tenderness of His compassion:

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at His feet and said to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”   When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping … He (Himself) wept.

And this He did in no foppish manner, for in line with the Vulgate translation we learn that when He saw their weeping:

 Jesus became perturbed -- not just upset, not merely distressed, but  deeply troubled with a mixture of anger and indignation.

It was in pursuance of such indignation that He asked to be shown the place  where Lazarus had been placed, that there He might make manifest His determination to overthrow the abusive power of Satan in the human lives of all who would believe in Him and learn to walk in His ways.

So Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.  Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to Him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”   Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”    So they took away the stone. 

It is not easy to assess just what Martha believed about Jesus; as you have seen she did most certainly believe in Him, but somehow, she seems always to have had too much to do, too much to keep in mind, for such belief to slow her down.  Her relationship with Jesus was a loosely-binding relationship, in which she recognized One Who was indeed mighty in His power and imposing in His Person as the Christ foretold by the prophets, but not One Who could for long impinge upon Martha’s work-ethic.  Martha would do anything  on this earth for Jesus, but she was not one to sit down and listen intently at the feet of Jesus that she might learn something of the heavenly wisdom so redolent, for Mary, in every word of Jesus   Thus, Martha most probably expressed the thoughts of all the visiting Jews present when she exclaimed, ‘Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.’

To that Jesus replied, somewhat reprovingly indeed, but again and above all, mysteriously:

            Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?  

Martha’s ‘belief’ needed to be both purified and deepened; for the moment,  though, her undoubted commitment would allow her to see the glory of God as her brother, Lazarus walked out of the tomb – bound though he was by his burial wrappings – at Jesus’ express command!

However, Saint Paul gives us a clue to the yet holier vision of God’s glory to be seen outside that tomb, a glory more likely to be seen by Mary than her sister Martha so thrilled by the re-appearance of Lazarus,  a holiness of which he spoke when writing to his converts at Corinth:

God Who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of (Jesus the) Christ.  (2 Corinthians 4:6)

And indeed, what beauty, what glory, was now to be seen on the face of Jesus as He:

Raised His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.  I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 

Jesus had undoubtedly spoken to Martha of the glory to be made manifest by the life-giving, life-restoring, miracle He was now about to perform when:

He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”  

Nevertheless, we are surely not erring if, in this case, we allow ourselves to think that the glory of God,  of which St. Paul speaks, the glory visible on Jesus’ up-turned face and which we can still find reflected  in His prayer, was a deeper glory than Martha could ever appreciate, a glory which Mary could perhaps have glimpsed and been totally overwhelmed thereby, indeed a truly divine glory,  expressive of the beauty of Jesus’ total love of His Father and of us; His oneness with and undying presence to His Father; the glory of His absolute selflessness, seeking not His own will, not His own renown, but that of His Father; the glory of His unconditional obedience to and love for His Father.

And again, dear friends, notice that, as we began, so here at the end, this wondrous miracle was entered upon and carried through to fulfilment:

That they may believe. 

‘Believe’ what? 

That is fully clarified when, standing before the tomb of Lazarus and surrounded by the accompanying crowd, Jesus prayed, audibly, saying:

Father, I thank You for hearing Me … because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 

Belief in Jesus as the One-sent-by-the-Father; that is the kernel of our Catholic and Christian faith, dear People of God.  Jesus is the Word of God, God the Son, become flesh of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit; and His glory on earth lies in the self-sacrificing love of His proclamation and manifestation of the ultimate Glory of the eternal God:  the sublime oneness and goodness of the most Holy Trinity, Father and Son -- begetting and begotten -- in the unity of the Most Holy Spirit of Truth and Love.  

Dear People of God, we are most surely meant to draw strength for our faith, consolation, comfort and joy, for our heart, as we ponder today’s readings.  For, in the difficulties and griefs, in the temptations and trials, of living and dying, the most important question we all will have to answer sometime is, ‘Do you trust in My love, do you believe in My power, to save you?’   And if, in such a moment of  decision, we can say with Martha, ‘Yes Lord, I believe’; and if indeed, we can go further with Mary, trustfully allowing any stone partially blocking the ready entrance to our heart to be fully rolled away,  thus leaving the way to our innermost being opened up wide to the saving power and healing love of Jesus, then, undoubtedly, we shall, as Jesus promised, see the glory of God.